One of Alaska's warmest springs on record is causing a dangerous thaw

[Eugene]

Source: Washington Post

One of Alaska’s warmest springs on record is causing a dangerous thaw

By Sarah Kaplan April 19 at 7:30 AM

UTQIAGVIK, Alaska — Bryan Thomas doesn’t want any more “wishy-washy conversations about climate change.”

For four years, he has served as station chief of the Barrow Atmospheric Baseline Observatory, America’s northernmost scientific outpost in its fastest-warming state. Each morning, after digging through snow to his office’s front door, Thomas checks the preliminary number on the observatory’s carbon dioxide monitor. On a recent Thursday it was almost 420 parts per million — nearly twice as high as the global preindustrial average.

It’s just one number, he said. But there’s no question in his mind about what it means.

Alaska is in the midst of one of the warmest springs the state has ever experienced — a transformation that has disrupted livelihoods and cost lives. The average temperature for March recorded at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) observatory in Utqiagvik (which was known as Barrow before 2016, when the city voted to go by its traditional Inupiaq name) was 18.6 degrees Fahrenheit above normal.

-snip-

Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/science/2019/04/19/one-alaskas-warmest-springs-record-is-causing-dangerous-thaw/

[Irishxs]

1. Tennessee is 45 now, high to be 49. Climate change is disastrous.

[kimbutgar]

2. I was on a cruise last September in Alaska we went to the Hubbard Glacier and the cruise director

Said it was the most melted and the closest the cruise ship had ever been to the glacier. This woman director had been doing this for 20 years in the cruise industry. Also it was supposed to be raining in other port Ketchikan and it was clear blue skies. The locals, I spoke with were surprised it was so dry.

[defacto7]

3. I'm in the SW and this will be the second year in a row

that my apricot tree will bear no fruit at all because of late freezes and no polinators. I think our smaller personal stories put another important face on climate change.